Downhole mills are used in oilfield operations to perform a variety of tasks. Typically, downhole mills include rotary cutters with hardened cutting surfaces used primarily to cut or grind material (e.g. metal, plastic, composite, etc.) at various downhole locations. In contrast, a downhole drill bit is typically used to cut the rock or downhole formation. Mills, in comparison, are run down the borehole to cut man-made obstructions so that further operations can proceed.
Some downhole mills are used to cut sidetrack windows into a cased portion of the borehole. With a side track window properly milled, a subsequent run with a drill bit can proceed out of the cased wellbore through the milled window to create a deviated bore. Furthermore, downhole mills are useful in the removal of various downhole obstructions, commonly referred to in the petroleum recovery industry as “junk.” Junk mills are frequently used to clean out various metallic and non-metallic obstructions that may exist within a string of casing or tubing. Particularly, the junk can include various objects accidentally dropped downhole from the surface (e.g. hand tools, wrenches, etc), components of drilling apparatuses (e.g. drill bit teeth, nozzles, etc.) that have broken off, or accumulated cement or other sediment left behind from previous downhole operations. In each case, the downhole mill is typically delivered to the location of interest upon a distal end of a work string so that the cutting head of the mill is rotated and axially (or, in the case of side-track mills, radially) loaded against the material to be cut.
Often, permanent devices are placed downhole that must be milled out if their removal becomes necessary. One example of such a device is a bridge plug; a device set downhole to isolate a lower region of a wellbore from an upper region. Typically, the lower region being isolated is a production zone, wherein the bridge plug is set either to prevent production fluids from escaping the production zone or to prevent fluids from a treatment operation from invading the production zone. When the removal of a bridge plug is desired, a milling operation can be performed. During such an operation, a mill is deployed at a distal end of a work string and the bridge plug is ground out. After the mill has progressed deep enough into the bridge plug, it can be retrieved either at the end of the work string or in a later, subsequent retrieval operation. One such drillable bridge plug is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/064,306, filed on Feb. 23, 2005, entitled Drillable Bridge Plug, hereby incorporated by reference herein.